SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2) (13 page)

Silence, then, Skippy said simply "Damn.
Damn it
!"

After waiting a moment for him to say something more,
I lost patience. "Skippy? Hello? Listen, if you're taking your time thinking
up a list of insults because my idea is stupid, how about you just tell me now,
and we can set aside time later for you to bust my balls about it, Ok?"

"I hate my life. This sucks," he grumbled.
"This is
so
unfair!"

"What is unfair?"

"Joe, I do not know how this happened. I don't
know how this could be possible, given the laws of physics. Somehow, you came
up with a good idea. You. A monkey! Oh, I am so humiliated. I hate my life! I
crunched billions of variables and came up with nothing, no way to take out all
three of those ships, and a freakin' monkey says, 'duh, how about this idea',
off the top of its stupid freakin' monkey head." He sounded truly,
completely miserable. "Joe, if I had a nose, I could blow it, and what
comes out would be smarter than your entire species combined. Yet, somehow,
you, you of all beings, comes up with a good idea. Unbe-lie-vable!"

"Uh, huh," I said slowly. "So, Skippy,
uh, is this like when you had the genius idea for us to raid the asteroid, but
you forgot the fact that humans need space suits, in space?"

"Enjoy the moment, monkeyboy, it won't happen
again," he grumbled.

"Hmm, are you taking bets on that, Skippy?"

"Oh, shut up. I hate you. Stupid monkeys."

"I love you too, Skippy. Can you program a jump
for us, to get us close enough to that battlecruiser?"

"Yes, damn it, I'll program a jump so we can do
your stupid plan."

"Stupid? I thought you said my plan was not
stupid."

"It isn't," he said so quietly that I could
barely hear him.

"What?" I said with a grin, looking through
the glass at people in the CIC. "I couldn't hear you, Skippy. This plan, a
plan from a monkey brain, is not stupid?"

"No."

"Hmmm. What is the opposite of stupid, I
wonder?"

"Smart! The opposite is smart! There, I said it,
you happy now? Damn, my life is already miserable enough. At times like this, I
am nostalgic about those years I spent buried in the dirt on Paradise. Ohhhh,
those days were so sweet. Peaceful, quiet, no screeching monkeys-"

"Just program the jump, Skippy, please."

Twenty six hours, twenty four minutes after the
Kristang task force jumped in, four of their ships jumped away, leaving behind
the battlecruiser and two destroyers. Somehow I was able to order us to wait
another agonizing twenty minutes, to be sure those four ships were safely a
long way away, before I ordered us into action. We jumped in close to the
battlecruiser, close enough to be comfortably within Skippy's effective range,
far enough not to trigger a panicky immediate jump away by the Kristang ship.
As soon as we emerged from the jump, Skippy transmitted a supposedly secret
Thuranin code, instructing the Kristang to hold position and maintain
communications silence. There was a Jeraptha cruiser in the area, Skippy told
the Kristang, pretending to be the Thuranin commander. "Damn it,"
Skippy grumbled in frustration, "they just queried me back, after I
ordered them very sternly to keep quiet."

"What's their weapons status?" I asked
anxiously. As part of the deception, we had our defensive shields down, leaving
us vulnerable to enemy fire. The lesser technology of the Kristang would not
matter much at such short range, their masers, particle beams and railguns
could close the gap fast and hurt the
Dutchman
badly. When Skippy
recommended we not raise shields, I had questioned that idea, until Skippy
convinced me that a shielded Thuranin ship, jumping in super close to the
Kristang, would very likely trigger an immediate jump away by the
battlecruiser. We needed the Kristang to hesitate just long enough for Skippy
to activate the nanovirus and seize control of the battlecruiser.

"They are spinning up missile guidance systems,
and they now have four maser batteries and one railgun locked onto us. The
railgun capacitors are charging up now. Man, there is zero trust between those
two species. I am trying a softer tactic, explaining the situation, rather than
issuing orders. Huh, well, that didn't work, a kinder, gentler Thuranin
apparently isn't believable. The Kristang commander is ordering a jump, and
signaling the two destroyers to follow him, but, three, two, one, too late,
suckers! Ha! I have complete control of that battlecruiser through the
nanovirus, Joe. Their jump drive is conveniently charged, reprogramming jump
coordinates now. Oh, man, there is panic aboard that ship, they are trying to
eject drones containing their flight logs, I'm blocking that. They are also
trying to launch missiles manually; I'm holding the missile launch tube outer
doors closed. Ready for jump."

I indulged in one last look at the battlecruiser on
the main display, in the dim, sullen light of the red dwarf star, the ship
looked evil; all hard angles, protruding weapons and sensor stations, with
nothing about the shape of the ship that wasn't purely functional. Kristang
ship designers seem to have gone out of their way to make their warships ugly.
"Do it, Skippy."

The battlecruiser disappeared from the display. The
problem with this plan was the same as the advantage of the plan; the two
destroyers were far enough away that the light from our jump in near the
battlecruiser, the signal from the Kristang task force commander and the
distinctive gamma ray burst of the battlecruiser jumping away, that light traveled
so comparatively slowly that the battlecruiser should have jumped in on top of
the destroyers before the light arrived there. According to the plan, the pair
of destroyers would only see the image of the battlecruiser, from light that
was sixty eight seconds out of date. They would see light that showed the
battlecruiser, all by itself, doing whatever it was doing, and the next thing
those destroyers saw would be the battlecruiser jumping in almost on top of
them, jumping in, the spatial distortion of the inbound jump point violently
rocking the destroyers, the roiling ripples of the inbound jump causing ripples
in spacetime that prevented the destroyers from jumping away to safety. And
then the battlecruiser's reactors, missile warheads and jump drive coils would
have exploded, ripping the battlecruiser apart and causing catastrophic damage
to the destroyers. By the time the gamma ray burst of our jump in reached the
destroyers, after sixty eight seconds, the destroyers should have been in no
condition to detect those gamma rays, or do anything about it.

According to the plan, that is. The problem with the
plan was that, after Skippy jumped the battlecruiser away, we wouldn't know
whether the plan had worked for another sixty eight seconds, when the light
from the destroyers' position reached us. One thing I had considered was for us
to jump near the destroyers, as soon as possible, to determine whether the plan
worked or not. After considering, what I decided was to stay right where we
were, and bite my nails for sixty eight seconds. If we had jumped to get a
quicker view, and things went wrong somehow, it would be another eighty seconds
before we could jump safely away again. That was too much risk for me. Maybe
Adams was right, maybe my inexperience at command made me more risk averse than
needed. I couldn't see the advantage of taking on more risk right then. And I
kept telling myself that, every second for sixty eight seconds.

The plan could have gone wrong. When Skippy jumped the
battlecruiser, he programmed it to jump to coordinates of where the pair of
destroyers should have been at the time, unfortunately, the information we had
about the destroyers' location was also sixty eight seconds old. Damn, space
combat is
complicated
. While we were seizing control of the
battlecruiser, the destroyers could have moved unpredictably, and the
battlecruiser could have jumped into empty space. I made the rookie mistake of
expressing that fear out loud, at the forty five second mark.

"I don't think that happened, Joe," Skippy
assured me, "the task force commander was very strict, he ordered those
destroyers to hold position, tucked inside one stealth field, until he ordered
them to maneuver. Which he hadn't yet done, at the time we jumped in and took
control of his ship. The last transponder signal from the destroyers shows they
were exactly where they were supposed to be at the time. I have high
confidence. Between your unsubstantiated fears, and my rigorous statistical
analysis, I'll take my numbers every time."

While Skippy was talking, I momentarily took my eyes
away from the countdown timer on the display. "That's great, Skip-"

"And sixty eight seconds, mark!" Skippy
shouted excitedly. "Detecting a gamma ray burst, exactly where it is
supposed to be, and way more accurate a jump than the stupid lizards could have
done on their own, also, yes, detecting a reactor, missiles and jump drive
coils exploding. The battlecruiser is gone. And, yes! Detecting secondary
explosions! Give me a minute, there is a whole lot of noise in the sensor data.
Hmmm, yes, yes. Successful, hundred percent. Both destroyers disabled. The
battlecruiser jumped in slightly ahead of them, that is the best I could do
with the inert lump of rock the Kristang use for a jump drive, the explosion
caused severe damage to the forward section of both destroyer hulls."

"Excellent!" I breathed a sigh of relief.
"Is it safe for us to jump in?"

"Best we wait another seventy nine seconds, for
the debris cloud to clear the area, otherwise we might get whacked by something
moving at high speed. Those destroyers are not going anywhere, Joe, don't worry
about that."

"Got it. Program a jump for us, please, Skippy.
Pilot," I addressed Chen in the lefthand seat, "engage jump in
seventy nine seconds."

"Joe," Skippy said, "I have to admit,
this was a clever and inventive plan. In my research, I was unable to see any
way we could take out all three ships. Now I know the factor that I was missing
from my calculations; it did not occur to me to use one enemy ship, as a weapon
against the other enemy ships. That was clever. Especially for, you know, a
monkey."

I couldn't help chuckling. "Skippy, I assume you
meant that as a compliment somehow, and since you suck at giving compliments, I
will say thank you. We monkeys don't have big claws or sharp teeth, and we
can't fly and we're not particularly big or strong. We rely on being
clever."

"Hmmm. Don't get used to it, Joe, you are, after
all, only monkeys. This is a hostile galaxy, every spacefaring species out
there has genetically or cybernetically enhanced intelligence, or both."

"Like the Thuranin, you mean?"

"Exactly."

"Yeah," I said, tapping the arm of the
command chair. It was the only chair aboard the star carrier that fit humans
without adjustment, the Thuranin commanders must have liked the feeling of
sitting in an extra-large chair. "Yet, here we monkeys are, in one of
their ships. What do you think of that, Sergeant Adams?"

"Monkeys kick ass, sir, " she grinned, and
gave me an enthusiastic thumbs up. "Damn straight."

"Crap," Skippy grumbled. "Now you
monkeys have gotten way too high an opinion of yourselves. I shouldn't have
said anything."

We jumped over to the two stricken destroyers. They
were both tumbling end over end, completely out of control. Skippy reported
there were survivors aboard both ships, survivors busy trying to stay alive,
and no threat to us.

"Sir?" Adams asked from the CIC, "Shall
we launch missiles?" I could see her finger expectantly poised over a
button.

"Those ships are still somewhat functional,
Skippy"? I asked, my jaw clenched. "Can they manage a short
jump?"

"Not on their own, no, or they would have jumped
away by now. However, I am now activating the nanovirus to take direct control
of their jump drive system, both ships can manage one short jump.  In their
current condition, I must caution you, that will be their last jump, their jump
drive coils are badly out of alignment."

"Do it. I want to jump those ships into the upper
atmosphere of that planet. Deep enough that they can't climb out of the gravity
well, high enough that the ships won't be crushed right away by the pressure.
You can do that?"

"Yes, certainly, the nanovirus is taking
effect," he said slowly, "can I ask why you don't simply hit them
with a pair of missiles?"

"You can always ask, Skippy. Two reasons, first,
we have a limited supply of missiles, and I don't want to expend ammo if we
don't need to."

"That makes sense, sure. The second reason, which
I suspect is more important?"

"The second reason, Skippy, is that I've been to
Earth recently. I saw what those lizards did to my home planet, saw what they
tried to do to my planet and my entire species. It's really simple, Skippy; I'm
pissed, and I want the Kristang to experience the fear that humans felt. Some
of the Kristang, at least. Most of the Kristang on Earth, you killed before
they realized what was happening. The ones that survived the initial strike,
huddled in their holes until you hit them with a hypersonic railgun. Again,
they were alive one moment, and dead the next. When you jump these ships into the
upper atmosphere, their crews will have a minute to realize what is happening,
as their ships plummet down towards the planet's core, and are crushed by the
increasing pressure. Think of this, Skippy, as my way of giving a middle finger
salute to the Kristang, on behalf of all the people on Earth."